Speaker 1: Like a like a hero, Sophie, I deal with all
Speaker 1: sorts of stresses that you can't even imagine, like the
Speaker 1: stress of writing an episode about Alfredo Stressner, the dictator
Speaker 1: of Paraguay. Boom. How's that? Also the episode started like
Speaker 1: twenty seconds ago. Uh huh yeah, okay, Well we're doing great.
Speaker 1: That was perfect. That was such a good introduction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you everybody. How you doing, Sophie fu?
Speaker 1: So this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where Sophie
Speaker 1: and I banter and then people on the subreddit decide
Speaker 1: whether or not it's problematic. Um, it's the moral north
Speaker 1: Star that is sebred Thank god. I just think it's
Speaker 1: so I just the the subreddit. It's so funny sometimes
Speaker 1: where they're like, oh is uh is everything okay? There?
Speaker 1: It's like yes, but also no, none of it's okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the thing is, we love our fans, and
Speaker 1: I appreciate that there's fifty five thousand people who want
Speaker 1: to talk about the show and a subreddit that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of amazing. But at the same time, there's like
Speaker 1: a degree of all of these podcast episodes, everything we do,
Speaker 1: there's like a script. Today's script for this two part
Speaker 1: or is eighty six hundred and sixty five words. It's
Speaker 1: usually between eight and ten thousand words, but also like
Speaker 1: a third of the runtime of any episode. It's just
Speaker 1: us talking and the amount of fine tooth comb going
Speaker 1: over that people do like of like a like little
Speaker 1: jokes or like someone will misspeak or you'll transpose a
Speaker 1: couple of letters in a word, and then there's like
Speaker 1: thirty people talking about it, and it's like, guys, come on, man,
Speaker 1: we are recording a conversation. You know how those work.
Speaker 1: We've already recorded several of the conversations. We will make
Speaker 1: some gaffs. Yeah, to chill out, Come on, man, chill out.
Speaker 1: God bless the people. I know. I yeah, I like subredits. Man.
Speaker 1: I keep in my heart the people who are alike
Speaker 1: just listening to this so they don't have to be
Speaker 1: alone with their thoughts while driving or vacuuming the house
Speaker 1: or you know, shearing a goat walking the dog. God
Speaker 1: bless all of you. God bless you, and God bless
Speaker 1: us everyone. James Stout, welcome to the program. Thank you, Robert.
Speaker 1: It's glad to be here. Yep. Amongst the goat shearers,
Speaker 1: amongst the goat Shearers, James, what do you know about Paraguay?
Speaker 1: A relatively little. Actually, it's not another big area of
Speaker 1: expertise for me, So I'm excited to learn. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna venture to say, it's not really an expertise
Speaker 1: for many people outside of Paraguay. This is not a
Speaker 1: country that gets talked about a lot. It's certainly not
Speaker 1: a country that, like Americans, talk about a lot. I
Speaker 1: had to really, really aggressively go into the reading about
Speaker 1: this to learn much of any just because, like my life,
Speaker 1: the first thirty four years of my life had not
Speaker 1: provided me with much information passively about the country of Paraguay. Now,
Speaker 1: Paraguay is, if you're like me, and up until recently
Speaker 1: had not spent much time thinking about the country is
Speaker 1: a lovely little landlocked nation bordered by Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina.
Speaker 1: And it is perhaps the most doomed little country I've
Speaker 1: ever read about. Maybe Belgium, but they wound up dooming
Speaker 1: a lot of other people and Paraguay never did that.
Speaker 1: So the subject for our episode today is another little
Speaker 1: another dictator, Alfredo Stressner. And you know, we got to
Speaker 1: go through some history before we talk about Stressner because
Speaker 1: as a man himself, he's not the most like He's
Speaker 1: not like Hitler or like Saddam, where his early life,
Speaker 1: as dark as it is, is just this like wacky
Speaker 1: cavalcade of madness. Stressner is a guy who is an
Speaker 1: incredibly effective dictator. He might be best at being a
Speaker 1: dictator if anybody we've covered on this show, but he's
Speaker 1: also the best at being a dictator because he kind
Speaker 1: of lucks into the perfect situation for a dictator. Paraguay
Speaker 1: is almost like crafted over the course of about one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years to be the ideal country to
Speaker 1: have a dictator like Stressner. I've never really encountered a
Speaker 1: situation like this in a history, and it's fascinating as
Speaker 1: a result of that, But it all kind of comes
Speaker 1: back to the fact that Paraguay might kind of be
Speaker 1: cursed this. They have a rough chunk of history after
Speaker 1: the liberation from Spain. Like most of Latin America, Paraguays
Speaker 1: founded as a Spanish colony in the early sixteenth century
Speaker 1: and up until the last twenty years or so, it
Speaker 1: was not democratic in any meaningful way. One book that
Speaker 1: I read Paraguay under Stressner by Paul Lewis describes it
Speaker 1: as an unbroken sequence of dictatorships. Now, that is a
Speaker 1: nasty way to describe a political situation. It's also worth
Speaker 1: noting that when we're talking about the eighteen hundreds, that's
Speaker 1: an accurate description for basically everywhere on Earth. Like you
Speaker 1: could argue it's not that far off from describing the
Speaker 1: United States in that period, given the amount of people
Speaker 1: who are enslaved or otherwise disinfraniation. So Paraguay is not alone,
Speaker 1: you know, in the eighteen hundreds and having a bunch
Speaker 1: of dictatorships. Um. Now, when the country achieved its independence
Speaker 1: from Spain in eighteen eleven, it left behind a Obviously
Speaker 1: Spain was a could be a very brutal colonial master,
Speaker 1: but it didn't like do so in order to take
Speaker 1: on a more liberatory political system. The architect of their
Speaker 1: split from Spain, a guy named doctor Jose Gaspar Rodriguez
Speaker 1: de Francia, wound up as dictator, and that's probably not surprised.
Speaker 1: Was not surprising to that many people. He seems to
Speaker 1: have been fairly popular. He spends twenty five years in power,
Speaker 1: which is a substantial reign for a dictator. Stalin Mao,
Speaker 1: both only get like four years more than that, and
Speaker 1: those are kind of two famously, and this is eighteen eleven,
Speaker 1: which makes it, I think more impressive. Yeah, because people
Speaker 1: didn't look very long. Yeah. So he's in there a
Speaker 1: long time. And while he's in charge, you know, it
Speaker 1: is a dictatorship, and he brutally purges, you know, any
Speaker 1: kind of opposition that attempts to form. But for most Paraguayans,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty peaceful and relatively positive time, especially compared
Speaker 1: to kind of the previous period. It's worth noting that
Speaker 1: his official title voted to him by the Populace was
Speaker 1: El Supremo, so they could vote for his title, but
Speaker 1: not for when I vote put quotation marks. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like a thing where they've got like a parliament
Speaker 1: or whatever, or a congress that's like, you know, is
Speaker 1: basically enthralled to the dictator and periodically he'll have it
Speaker 1: vote for things. You know. That's kind of the story
Speaker 1: of Paraguay for quite a while. I want to be
Speaker 1: judging this guy based on his apparent but this man
Speaker 1: has a face like a spank toss if we I've
Speaker 1: never heard anyone describe that way. Next leg. I spoke
Speaker 1: a picture for him in a chat, and I think
Speaker 1: it'll come to you like that is they's not a looker.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you know his face people, you need
Speaker 1: to google this man. His face does look like a
Speaker 1: spanked ass. If there's no other way of coming. If
Speaker 1: you put a nose on an us, that would be
Speaker 1: his face. It's like the bottom half of its His
Speaker 1: face collapsed in on itself because he smelled something so unpleasant,
Speaker 1: like it looks like he's yeah, like awful. His five
Speaker 1: head is is Yeah, really, it's incredible. What a horrible portrait.
Speaker 1: I wonder if he killed the person who painted this,
Speaker 1: because look, if I would, that would be okay. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna say it. It's having this portrait made of you.
Speaker 1: It justifies at least one murder. This person struck a
Speaker 1: powerful blow for democracy. Cons So. One of the fun
Speaker 1: things about Paraguayan dictators is that they all are named
Speaker 1: like luchadors um. So this guy is El Supremo. His successor,
Speaker 1: Carlos Antonio Lopez, who's also dictator for life, is El Excellentissimo. Um.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, I know it's fun. These are these
Speaker 1: are some good names. I'm gonna be yeah. Um he
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, we gotta throw a fucking adjective up
Speaker 1: on that. Yeah, I'm taking to the max. So if
Speaker 1: you look at Paraguay on a map again, it is
Speaker 1: immediately obvious why the country has had such a tumultuous history.
Speaker 1: It is landlocked, and it is surrounded by Brazil and Argentina,
Speaker 1: two countries that are famously not peaceful with their neighbors
Speaker 1: during the eighteen hundreds. Um, although it's Paraguay that's going
Speaker 1: to be starting shit with them. So the early eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds are not a peaceful time in South America. And
Speaker 1: given the fact that Paraguay lacked any natural difference, so
Speaker 1: Paraguay is kind of geographically you might think of them
Speaker 1: as the opposite of Switzerland. Switzerland is like such a
Speaker 1: natural fortress that even with very few people, they could
Speaker 1: hold off as many times their size. Paraguay has basically
Speaker 1: no natural offenses other than that it's hot and there's
Speaker 1: lots of mosquitoes, which isn't nothing, but like anyone can
Speaker 1: kind of walk in there and cause problems. And so
Speaker 1: as a result, it's early dictators chose wisely to invest
Speaker 1: very heavily in the army. They're like, we're probably gonna
Speaker 1: wind up getting our asses kicked if we don't do this.
Speaker 1: And by the time Carlos Lopez, that's l Excellentissimo dies,
Speaker 1: his son, Francisco Solano Lopez takes power and at that
Speaker 1: point the little country has a military that is larger
Speaker 1: and more well funded than one would expect from a
Speaker 1: country of that size. Unfortunately, Francisco Lopez is um, he's
Speaker 1: going to take an ill advised year abroad to Europe.
Speaker 1: It's actually more like eighteen months. When he's in his
Speaker 1: twenties now. A lot of people go on gap year
Speaker 1: and you know, it's, yeah, go to some raves and yeah,
Speaker 1: intolerable in Barcelona. Yeah, it takes some e briefly date
Speaker 1: a German girl who has interesting opinions on the moon landing.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's all. We've all had good experiences
Speaker 1: on our gap year. Unfortunately, that is not the case
Speaker 1: with Francisco Lopez, because so his equivalent of entering into
Speaker 1: an ill advised romantic relationship from someone he met at
Speaker 1: a rave is he hangs out with Emperor Napoleon the
Speaker 1: third of France, um friend of the pod and so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from an article in the January twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen issue of Military Heritage magazine. Here he was taken
Speaker 1: particularly with the glittering marshal splendor of the court of
Speaker 1: the French Emperor Napoleon the Third. Returning home, Lopez brought
Speaker 1: back with him several steamships to fill out the embryonic
Speaker 1: Paraguayan fleet, along with all the guns, ammunition, and gold
Speaker 1: braid that his deep pockets could purchase. He also brought
Speaker 1: back it's it's a bling that. Yeah, he's he's getting
Speaker 1: going doubt. He also brought black a new mistress, an
Speaker 1: Irish adventuress named Eliza Lynch, who, like many a gold
Speaker 1: digger before her, catered to her meal tickets outsized ego,
Speaker 1: recklessly encouraging his delusions of grandeur in dreams of imperial glory. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know how entirely fair it is to blame
Speaker 1: this Irish jack. We are like, what happens next, But
Speaker 1: that's how that magazine put it. Yeah, so conte Military
Speaker 1: Heritage being particularly woke on gender, Yeah, that is very
Speaker 1: likely that said she does come up in any rite
Speaker 1: up you find it. The guy. I think there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot going on. I mean, he's a rich kid
Speaker 1: whose dad was the dictator, and he goes to Europe,
Speaker 1: falls in love with these European armies, and he builds
Speaker 1: himself a splendid little army based on the solid base
Speaker 1: that his dad has left him. In eighteen fifty seventies,
Speaker 1: made vice president to Paraguay, and then in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: two his dad dies in Francisco, takes power, and he
Speaker 1: from the beginning he cannot give up kind of these
Speaker 1: these dreams Napoleon had stoked of military excellence. He's a
Speaker 1: little bit like that doomed Hapsburg who's going to get
Speaker 1: murdered in Mexico right around this same time period. So
Speaker 1: this little military, very good military his predecessors had built,
Speaker 1: was adequate, very adequate to the task of defending Paraguay
Speaker 1: from intrusion by a neighbor. So he's he's got this
Speaker 1: toy like his for Lopez, this wonderful army that his
Speaker 1: predecessors built is like this big, shiny toy, and he
Speaker 1: spends like a couple of years outfitting it and getting
Speaker 1: it really set up. But he's, you know, the reasonable
Speaker 1: thing to do if you're Paraguay is just kind of
Speaker 1: try to keep being Paraguay, right, as opposed to starting
Speaker 1: a war with the neighbors who surround you and are
Speaker 1: all much larger. Lopez, though, he wants to be a
Speaker 1: big continental power like France, and so in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: four he decides to um to take that leap, you know,
Speaker 1: to throw the iron dice. So Uruguay, which is you know,
Speaker 1: pretty close, is racked by a sort of soft civil
Speaker 1: war at the time between two rival political parties. Again
Speaker 1: neither of them is very democratic, but one of these
Speaker 1: parties is backed or one of these parties, which is
Speaker 1: like the party in power at the time, is friendly
Speaker 1: with Lopez and Paraguay. Brazil backs the other party, and
Speaker 1: in this kind of internecine struggle, the party that Brazil
Speaker 1: is backing and arming wins. Lopez takes offense to this.
Speaker 1: He demands that Brazil stopped giving military support to Uruguay,
Speaker 1: and Brazil is like, you guys are like a speed bump,
Speaker 1: where Brazil, of course not you. What do you think
Speaker 1: we're gonna listen to you? They are much bigger. So
Speaker 1: he makes a questionable decision. Paraguay is on this river
Speaker 1: and there's like a Brazilian merchant ship that's import in
Speaker 1: the capital, and he has his forces sees that merchant
Speaker 1: ship and when they do, they find out that the
Speaker 1: Brazilian governor of the bordering province of Matta Groso is
Speaker 1: on the ship. So Lopez arrests this guy, throws him
Speaker 1: in a dungeon and then sends his arm and then
Speaker 1: invades Matta Groso and like, and it's this, it's a
Speaker 1: very big, sparsely populated province. He basically just marches in,
Speaker 1: takes the tiny capital town and then it's like, we
Speaker 1: own this whole thing. So that is a bold yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: doubling the side of his country in one fells group, yeah,
Speaker 1: and thinking this will probably be okay. So, like, this
Speaker 1: is a bold move at the best of times. And
Speaker 1: if he had just wound up going to war with Brazil,
Speaker 1: that's a tough fight for Paraguay, right, That's like that's
Speaker 1: like Kansas going to war with the entire state of Texas.
Speaker 1: Like it's not you know, the kind of odds are
Speaker 1: stacked against him as he is as it is, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't like stop just at taking Mattagroso, because the
Speaker 1: next thing he does is He's still pissed that Brazil
Speaker 1: has backed the side he didn't like in this conflict
Speaker 1: in Uruguay. So he sends his army to Uruguay to
Speaker 1: like take back power for his people. And at the time,
Speaker 1: by the way, while he's doing all of this, he
Speaker 1: has he has himself get voted the nickname El Supremo.
Speaker 1: So El Supremo sends his forces off to to Uruguay
Speaker 1: to win some glory. But the problem is that there's
Speaker 1: like this slice of Argentina. So Lopez like asks for
Speaker 1: permission to send his army through, and Argentina is like, no, hey,
Speaker 1: what do you what are he of course not, We're
Speaker 1: not gonna let you do this, and so he declares
Speaker 1: war on Argentina too, So great, what a chat. The
Speaker 1: third thing that happens is that because of everything else
Speaker 1: we've talked about, Uruguay winds up declaring war on him
Speaker 1: as well. Um. So this is a this is a
Speaker 1: bad situation to be in um And he, you know,
Speaker 1: he launches a couple of attacks with his well made
Speaker 1: little army, and his well made little army winds up
Speaker 1: getting just bashed to pieces, in large part because he
Speaker 1: is an incompetent commander. After thousands and thousands are dead,
Speaker 1: it becomes clear to Supremo that the population of young
Speaker 1: adult males is not going to be enough to sustain
Speaker 1: Paraguay's war effort, so he starts drafting children, creating battalions
Speaker 1: of twelve year olds to hold the line and suicidal
Speaker 1: last stands to delay the enemy. For an idea of
Speaker 1: how yeah, for an idea of how bad this is,
Speaker 1: there are ports of like Brazilian soldiers massacring trench lines
Speaker 1: and then when they realize they've just shot a bunch
Speaker 1: of twelve year olds, like weeping and like just breaking
Speaker 1: down because like you know, like that's a pretty bad situation.
Speaker 1: Twelve year old. No, nobody, very few people want to
Speaker 1: kill twelve years yeah. Yeah. So, as this war drags on,
Speaker 1: Lopez starts drafting old men and eventually even women. He
Speaker 1: has them doing a lot of logistics work in the back,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen sixty nine, Asuncion the capitol falls and
Speaker 1: Lopez flees into the hills to fight a guerrilla war,
Speaker 1: which he is just as bad at as the rest
Speaker 1: of this The last of his forces are surrounded in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy and he dies a band ending them trying
Speaker 1: to wade across the river. So now that's that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of funny the way this ends. And like, objectively,
Speaker 1: there's an absurdity to how badly this war goes. But
Speaker 1: like James, you and I have both reported on and
Speaker 1: studied a lot of wars. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: read about a war that goes worse for a country.
Speaker 1: No war this goes. This is called the War of
Speaker 1: the Triple Alliance. So the death toll of the War
Speaker 1: of the Triple Alliance is comparable to the American Civil War.
Speaker 1: There is no accurate pre war census of Paraguay. All
Speaker 1: of the estimates of the of the percentage of the
Speaker 1: country that dies are kind of based on calculations that
Speaker 1: are themselves a little bit of a crapshoot um. But
Speaker 1: I have every analysis that I've read makes basically the
Speaker 1: same point, which is, Paraguay suffered a higher percentage of
Speaker 1: its populace dead than any country in a war I
Speaker 1: can I can name. Um. The most common estimates say
Speaker 1: that two thirds of the pre war population die. Um.
Speaker 1: Some estimates place the death tolet. There are estimates as
Speaker 1: high as ninety percent, although that's likely high, but everyone
Speaker 1: seems degrees sixty per seventy percent of the entire country
Speaker 1: dead is a reasonable estimate. This includes nine ninety percent
Speaker 1: of the pre war male population. Wow, and so post
Speaker 1: war chunks of the country will have a twenty to
Speaker 1: one ratio of women to men. So that's about as
Speaker 1: bad as a war could go. Yeah, yeah, that's not great.
Speaker 1: That's it's really sub optimalcome for everyone. Yeah, maybe from
Speaker 1: the dude to survive, but yeah, the graphic collapse, wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, it is it. It's like, I don't I've
Speaker 1: ever heard of a war going that badly, Like when
Speaker 1: you're making German casualties in World War two seem like,
Speaker 1: well that's you know, you can bats back from that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it didn't even do like twelve year olds
Speaker 1: at the Battle of the Psalm that is. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: love that the sort of the misogyny kept on if
Speaker 1: when they were sending twelve year olds out there, that like,
Speaker 1: we've got to keep women out of the front line,
Speaker 1: can't company yea guns? Yep. It's uh, there's a lot
Speaker 1: actually to say about because I've read a couple of
Speaker 1: articles about this about like the way in which this
Speaker 1: impacts kind of cultures of entrenched misogyny in Paraguay that
Speaker 1: I am not really competent to go into. But there's
Speaker 1: you know, a lot, there is a lot written about
Speaker 1: like what happens when you're like the first generation of
Speaker 1: young men after this, and there's like like twenty twenty
Speaker 1: to one female male ratio and all this attention being
Speaker 1: kind of like lavished on you because of how badly
Speaker 1: this war goes and how decimated the population of men
Speaker 1: was prior to this. There you can find some really
Speaker 1: interesting writing on this. I don't want to, like, uh,
Speaker 1: we'd be getting a little bit off of where I
Speaker 1: feel competent talking to go much more into it, but
Speaker 1: it's most worth reading that, Yeah, you're going to fuck
Speaker 1: up your society for genetically as well as social. It's
Speaker 1: really it's very rarely good if ninety percent of any
Speaker 1: group and your society gets massacre. He's like he's bested
Speaker 1: the Black Death in terms of decimating his own Sula
Speaker 1: Lopez gets our gets the behind the Bastards of award
Speaker 1: for probably the worst at Warum, I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever heard if anyone fail worse at having a war
Speaker 1: than this. But you know who's good at engaging in
Speaker 1: unrestricted warfare? Oh, the Raith Young Corporation. That they are,
Speaker 1: They are one of the best. And all of our
Speaker 1: sponsors believe that you can only truly achieve victory in
Speaker 1: a conflict by salting the earth with the bones of
Speaker 1: your enemy. Um. So you know you get the gold,
Speaker 1: isn't it You grow grows from the bones, That's right,
Speaker 1: That's right, that's where gold comes from. And also where
Speaker 1: the best delivered mattresses are forged from. Anyway, the biom mattress. Ah,
Speaker 1: we're back. So Paraguay just kind of barely ekes it
Speaker 1: out as a country after this. Um. And if you're
Speaker 1: if you're interested in kind of much more detail about this,
Speaker 1: the War of the Triple Alliance, which if you google
Speaker 1: it that's also like you'll get a lot of World
Speaker 1: War One results, but this is a different thing. The
Speaker 1: Lions led by Donkeys podcast did a good series on this,
Speaker 1: which which you should check out. They go into it,
Speaker 1: spend a lot more time on it than we are,
Speaker 1: because this is just kind of setting the scene. So
Speaker 1: Paraguay and kind of like there's this series obviously afterwards,
Speaker 1: Brazil occupies the country, the people, the countries who would
Speaker 1: want to take about a third of the land mass
Speaker 1: of Paraguay as kind of part of the war debt,
Speaker 1: and then there's another like cash war debt that staggers
Speaker 1: the economy for a few generations. The only reason that
Speaker 1: Paraguay survives at all less a nation is that Brazil
Speaker 1: and Argentina are big rivals and neither of them is
Speaker 1: willing to let the other have Paraguay. Right, they kind
Speaker 1: of like maintain a rump state there just because it's
Speaker 1: not worth dealing with the conflict over who gets to
Speaker 1: have it now. Argentina in this period had played host
Speaker 1: to a lot of dissident Paraguayans, members of the old
Speaker 1: upper class who had had to flee the country when
Speaker 1: the dictators took over right when Spain gets kicked out,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of these guys, when Argentina participates in
Speaker 1: this invasion of Paraguay, they form up and join the
Speaker 1: Argentine army and like make a unit of like exiled
Speaker 1: Paraguayans fighting to liberate the country from Lopez. And so
Speaker 1: after eighteen seventy, Argentina successfully kind of helps maneuver these
Speaker 1: guys into power, and they draw up a democratic constitution
Speaker 1: that basically existed as an excuse for these people to
Speaker 1: sell off all of the state's land and businesses for
Speaker 1: their own personal profit. The British banking firm Bearing Baring's brothers.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, James, how did I know that the British
Speaker 1: banking industry would get involved? I was just going to
Speaker 1: remark of selling off the entire country's assets for your
Speaker 1: own personal profit is a very British vibe. Like the
Speaker 1: thing is so it is. I mean waiting as a
Speaker 1: as a rule, if there's like a dictator in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, there's a British bank behind God, let's not
Speaker 1: let's not limit the time period so narrowly, very air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've made a long and proud tradition of during three
Speaker 1: twentieth century. So Margaret's kid. So the Bearings brothers are like, Wow,
Speaker 1: things are going great in Paraguay. Look at how effectively
Speaker 1: they have taken all of these national resources and handed
Speaker 1: them off to a tiny chunk number of oligarchs. Here's
Speaker 1: a couple of very large loans Paraguay, and the oligarchs
Speaker 1: say thank you for the loans that are meant to
Speaker 1: develop our country. We're just going to take the money though,
Speaker 1: and buy houses. Yeah, and so the nation has left
Speaker 1: bankrupt and in ruinous debt. After this, it's again not
Speaker 1: the first or the last time this will happen. So
Speaker 1: the Brazilian military occupies Paraguay for a while, but they
Speaker 1: bounce pretty quick and Paraguayans are left to try and
Speaker 1: navigate their place in South America. Bereft of a couple
Speaker 1: generations of men and also any money. It does not
Speaker 1: go smoothly. As scholar Paul Lewis describes, Paraguayan governments after
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy brought either internal peace nor liberty, although they
Speaker 1: were still dictatorships. Managed elections, or the direct seizure of
Speaker 1: power was the means by which every succeeding president achieved office.
Speaker 1: Forty four men occupied the presidency in the eighty five
Speaker 1: years between the death of Slano Lopez and Alfredo Streissner's
Speaker 1: coup in nineteen fifty four, one president every twenty three months. Moreover,
Speaker 1: of those forty four, more than a half twenty four
Speaker 1: were forced from office by violence of the threat of violence.
Speaker 1: Many of the remainder were simply provisional presidents who headed
Speaker 1: caretaker governments while the real contestants for power fought it out.
Speaker 1: Sixteen of the twenty four presidents were overthrown. Who were
Speaker 1: overthrown served for less than a year, and five of
Speaker 1: them were in office less than a month. Amazing. This
Speaker 1: is a lot of turnover. Yeah, the worst is the
Speaker 1: period from nineteen ten to nineteen twelve. That is a
Speaker 1: two year period in which Paraguay has seven presidents and
Speaker 1: nine administrations outstanding. Again, don't just wait, because we could
Speaker 1: still do that in the United Kingdom. We've been we've
Speaker 1: been pushing for it. Hey, I believe both your country
Speaker 1: and my country can have seven presidents in two years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd love to see. All it's gonna take is the
Speaker 1: Secret Service getting a little bit more into cocaine. And
Speaker 1: they're already pretty into cocaine. It's gonna be like, get
Speaker 1: cocaine bear up and there in the CIA, and it'll
Speaker 1: be I think it would be nice if, like our president,
Speaker 1: we adopted like a pseudomystical tradition where like the president
Speaker 1: gets to continue to be president as long as the
Speaker 1: cocaine bear does not eat him, and when it does,
Speaker 1: we all agree not to be partisan about it. It's
Speaker 1: just like it's it's like that that what's its name?
Speaker 1: Seeing its shadow and deciding we're going to have more winter.
Speaker 1: She's like the bear the president. Can I get a
Speaker 1: new one in there? He's talking about the groundhog. The groundhog.
Speaker 1: I forgot the name groundhog, so sorry, yeah, Phill, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I recently learned. Apparently there is another groundhog called
Speaker 1: Staten Island phil Um. But the previous New York mayor
Speaker 1: dropped it. Our ground hugs not drop safe. I think
Speaker 1: it depends on the height and probably the angle of
Speaker 1: the drop. This is another reason cats are superior. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can drop a cat all day long. I don't
Speaker 1: get shit. Mayor? Was this? Do you know? Because I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna look handsel Stan? Yeah, I guess it's let's
Speaker 1: have a look stant nine and phil dropped de Blacio.
Speaker 1: Here we go, Washington Post. Stannine, his famous groundhog died
Speaker 1: after build de Blacio dropped it. Incredible, incredible, p he's
Speaker 1: the Francisco Solano Lopez of New York groundhogs. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: were pictures. The dog is a pitch of it on
Speaker 1: its way down. Oh, how far did you drop him. Okay,
Speaker 1: was he standing on a balcony? Was he? Was he
Speaker 1: doing a Michael Jackson with this animal? Oh god, if
Speaker 1: I had, Deblascio would have been at the top of
Speaker 1: my list of mirrors. He's blamed the groundhog for his unpopularity.
Speaker 1: Wow yeah, wow. This manisode goes out to that groundhog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is now dedicated to whatever that groundhog's
Speaker 1: name was. Just Staten Island film stann Island, Phil r I,
Speaker 1: Oh god, Deblascio, what the fuck this? Honestly as you
Speaker 1: can't blame you can't blame the groundhog. No, I like,
Speaker 1: he's another victim of state violence, and I have to
Speaker 1: say it another example of classic groundhog shaming, which is
Speaker 1: a plague in this country. So back to Paraguay in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen twenties, things are finally starting to improve
Speaker 1: slightly after that, after that two year seven precedent run
Speaker 1: even out a little bit. They get some more competent
Speaker 1: leaders who start to reinvest. I mean they're mainly reinvesting
Speaker 1: in the military, but also not the worst idea given
Speaker 1: kind of the situation, because at this point the late twenties,
Speaker 1: the only neighbor that Paraguay has not lost a devastating war.
Speaker 1: Two Bolivia starts sniffing around this region in northern Paraguay
Speaker 1: called the Chaco, and Bolivians are like, well, the last
Speaker 1: time Paraguay went to war didn't go good, and like
Speaker 1: we could probably take them, and there's this kind of
Speaker 1: this place, the Chaco is kind of this like wasteland
Speaker 1: in the northern significant chunk of the country. It's not
Speaker 1: a wasteland, but that's how it gets described by people.
Speaker 1: It's like a kind of desertified territory. It looks beautiful. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I'd love to go hike there or something, although there's
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of skeeters. But there's this
Speaker 1: like the Olivia becomes briefly convinced because of like they
Speaker 1: find a little bit of oil there. There's not really
Speaker 1: oil in the Chaco, but they are convinced that, like
Speaker 1: there's a shitload of oil in the Chaco, and so
Speaker 1: they're like, let us, let's let's go invade and take
Speaker 1: this from Paraguay. And it's kind of obvious for a while.
Speaker 1: Part of why this is happening is that, like when
Speaker 1: everybody gets their freedom from Spain, they don't always have
Speaker 1: like super clear maps of who's is what. So there's
Speaker 1: like this long argument about like whether or not, you know,
Speaker 1: this chunk of the Chaco should belong to Paraguay or Bolivia.
Speaker 1: So they're all arming while this is going on, and
Speaker 1: Paraguay puts this guy in command of their army in
Speaker 1: the Chaco called Jose Estigarribia, and he is going to
Speaker 1: be There are military scholars who will say this guy
Speaker 1: is one of, if not the best field commanders in
Speaker 1: the history of modern warfare in the Americas, because the
Speaker 1: war that's about to result from this is a modern
Speaker 1: in war. They have tanks, they have machine guns, they
Speaker 1: have air power. This is going to occur in like
Speaker 1: the early nineteen thirties. The Bolivians put an old German
Speaker 1: Man in charge of their military. Now what time, guys,
Speaker 1: you're you're not even ready, James, You're not even ready
Speaker 1: because this guy's this guy is no shit. Real name
Speaker 1: is General von kunt Li k you in DT. Look
Speaker 1: this ship up now, I know on this episode always
Speaker 1: called Hans cunt Yeah, so he I was going to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy from the day he was born, which look,
Speaker 1: so this guy, first of all the Vaughan means that
Speaker 1: he's German nobility. He is a German officer's count me. Well,
Speaker 1: let me tell you the rest of the story. So
Speaker 1: he is a German general officer throughout the First World
Speaker 1: War in the Eastern Front, and he has a reputation
Speaker 1: for two things. One he is a competent logistical commander
Speaker 1: and two, whenever there's any kind of combat, his go
Speaker 1: to tactic is to throw every man he has into
Speaker 1: a suicidal headlong charge. He is a He is one
Speaker 1: of the worst journal commanders. He is terrible at what
Speaker 1: he's doing. Um, he gets a shitload of men killed,
Speaker 1: but he's he's also he becomes after the war a
Speaker 1: celebrity in Bolivia. Um. Now, this is very like like
Speaker 1: the question of like why is this guy so beloved
Speaker 1: by the Oblivians. A lot of it is that, like
Speaker 1: he loves Bolivia, like he moves there. After World War One,
Speaker 1: he gets a job kind of acting as an instructor
Speaker 1: for the Bolivian military. This is very common at the
Speaker 1: time too. I mean, you have to remember that while
Speaker 1: von Kunt is very bad at what he does, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, the German military has just almost won a
Speaker 1: war against the world. So all of these little countries
Speaker 1: and big countries in South America are like, oh, we
Speaker 1: the best people we can get to help us reform
Speaker 1: our militaries is some German guy, right, because like they
Speaker 1: got they came pretty close to winning. So the Bolivians
Speaker 1: fall in love with von Kunt because he's just kind
Speaker 1: of this, despite the fact that he's shit eatingly incompetent,
Speaker 1: he looks and talks like this, like archetypal image of
Speaker 1: the Prussian military genius, and they just all kind of
Speaker 1: buy it. Paraguays again, Paraguay's army is commanded by Estegarribia,
Speaker 1: who's one of the best military leaders in the modern
Speaker 1: history of the Americas. And so the Chaco War which
Speaker 1: results when Bolivia invades, is a fascinating conflict. It is
Speaker 1: going to be a testing ground for a lot of
Speaker 1: tactics that are key in World War Two. This is
Speaker 1: not a military history podcast, so we're not going to
Speaker 1: labor long on the specifics. But there is one key
Speaker 1: detail I think we need to talk about, which is
Speaker 1: that when the Paraguayans start arming up in the late
Speaker 1: twenties and early thirties, they have to make one of
Speaker 1: those tough decisions that countries who don't spend a trillion
Speaker 1: dollars a year on their army have to make, which
Speaker 1: is like, what kind of artillery do we buy? Because
Speaker 1: we can't afford a lot of it, and we can't
Speaker 1: afford many different kinds, so we're either going to be
Speaker 1: getting a few big guns or a lot of little ones. Now,
Speaker 1: World War One had proven that modern wars can't really
Speaker 1: be one without big guns. But big guns come with
Speaker 1: all sorts of logistical hurdles, and Paraguay did not have
Speaker 1: the industrial base to manufacture the kind of shells and
Speaker 1: parts that larger field pieces needed. Artillery was also super
Speaker 1: vulnerable to air power, and Bolivia had an air force
Speaker 1: that outnumbered Paraguays more than two to one. So the
Speaker 1: very savvy Bolivian military planners or a Paraguayan military planners decided,
Speaker 1: instead of buying a bunch of big a few big
Speaker 1: field guns that planes can bomb, why don't we just
Speaker 1: get hundreds and hundreds of eighty one millimeter mortars. We'll
Speaker 1: just get a shitload a little mortars. And these are
Speaker 1: like man portable indirect fire weapons that you can camouflage easily.
Speaker 1: You can like pick them up and run like a
Speaker 1: motherfucker after shooting some stuff off, and they fire a
Speaker 1: small enough shell that Paraguay could afford to make it indigenously.
Speaker 1: This was a huge success. Paraguay becomes maybe the first
Speaker 1: nation to use mortars effectively in a modern combined arms
Speaker 1: sense in the twentieth century. They use mortars very similarly
Speaker 1: to how you're going to see them used in Ukraine
Speaker 1: and stuff during this conflict, and they just massacre the Bolivians.
Speaker 1: This war goes terrible for Bolivia despite having by far
Speaker 1: more men in tanks and stuff. And one of the
Speaker 1: officers who is in command of a mortar of a
Speaker 1: bunch of mortars during this war, I think he winds
Speaker 1: up at the end in control of the mortar regiment
Speaker 1: that helps to win the Chaco War is a guy
Speaker 1: who aventially a general named Alfredo Stressner. Right, that's the
Speaker 1: job that stress the big job Stressner does. He is,
Speaker 1: he is a mortar commander. Now. Stressner's father, Hugo, had
Speaker 1: been part of the massive German diaspha that had moved
Speaker 1: to South America in the years leading up to the
Speaker 1: First World War. Hugo was a Bavarian who'd worked as
Speaker 1: an accountant for a brewery. His mother was the daughter
Speaker 1: of a wealthy Paraguayan family of its She's actually a
Speaker 1: mix of Basque and indigenous Paraguayan descent. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: Stressner fairly a lot of privilege, you know. But the
Speaker 1: fact that his dad is German, they have a lot
Speaker 1: more like money than most people, and his mom comes
Speaker 1: from a family with money too. He enrolls in a
Speaker 1: military school when he's sixteen, and by the time the
Speaker 1: Chaco War breaks out, he's nineteen years old and had
Speaker 1: established has established a reputation for himself as a competent
Speaker 1: leader who has earned the respect of his men. Paraguayan
Speaker 1: politics remains tumultuous in the years after the Chaco War,
Speaker 1: but Stressner succeeded in sliding past most people's radar because
Speaker 1: he's really fucking boring. We don't have a I don't
Speaker 1: have all. I haven't found a lot on this guy's
Speaker 1: early life, on his childhood and stuff, but he is.
Speaker 1: It seems accurate to say, based on the stuff I
Speaker 1: have read that goes into detail, that he is a quiet,
Speaker 1: sober man whose main hobbies are chess, fishing, and a
Speaker 1: weekly poker game. He gets married to a school teacher
Speaker 1: who's a few years older than him in nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: They have three children, and most people who knew Stressner
Speaker 1: at this point in time would be like, hey, he's
Speaker 1: a quiet family man. He plays a lot of chess.
Speaker 1: You know, he's about as boring a guy as you're
Speaker 1: going to get. In nineteen forty, he gets picked for
Speaker 1: advanced training at a military college, and he returns home
Speaker 1: a major whose superiors call him a complete officer who
Speaker 1: was discreet and circumspect. Again, everyone, everything about this guy
Speaker 1: is he is quiet and competent and not really worth
Speaker 1: talking about in much detail outside of that, which is again,
Speaker 1: we just finished our episodes on Romania and Chauchescu. You
Speaker 1: always got to watch out for the quiet guys. So quiet.
Speaker 1: If you ever meet someone who is quiet and competent,
Speaker 1: bear mas them. That's the only thing to do. You know, somebody,
Speaker 1: somebody you know, changes your your your car oil. You know,
Speaker 1: quiet and competent mechanic Mason, do it to anybody who's
Speaker 1: good at anything and humble. It's the only way we
Speaker 1: can save ourselves from another Alfredo Stressner. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that seems fair. Yeah. By the By the
Speaker 1: early forties, Paraguay had taken a kind of rough stab
Speaker 1: at democratic politics. This never goes great for them, and
Speaker 1: the parties that they have are never very committed to
Speaker 1: any scheme that might make them give up power if
Speaker 1: they happen to take it. The largest conservative party in
Speaker 1: the country is the Colorado Party, and it has both
Speaker 1: a democratic wing, which means a wing that cares about democracy,
Speaker 1: and a wing that doesn't so much care about democracy.
Speaker 1: And in the early forties, that second wing is run
Speaker 1: by a man named Juan Natalisio Gonzalez. Now, he'd been
Speaker 1: involved in a number of violent protests and one failed
Speaker 1: revolution before, for which he'd been exiled and then sent
Speaker 1: to a concentration camp from which he had escaped. So
Speaker 1: Gonzales has quite a background, and he had prior to
Speaker 1: getting like exiled the second time he has been, he'd
Speaker 1: been kind of a rabbit, almost religious nationalist. And then
Speaker 1: he gets exiled the second time, and he winds up
Speaker 1: like most Paraguayans who get exiled, fleeing to Argentina and Willie's.
Speaker 1: While he's in Argentina, he meets a bunch of socialists
Speaker 1: who have also been exiled because they had tried to do,
Speaker 1: you know, a revolution, and these socialists, you know, even
Speaker 1: though they're pretty left wing guys, also happened to be nationalists.
Speaker 1: And so Gonzalez becomes more and more convinced that the
Speaker 1: right politics for Paraguay might be some kind of you'd
Speaker 1: call it national socialism. Yeah, going, it's bad now, James,
Speaker 1: I know what you're saying, But this is the mid thirties.
Speaker 1: No one, no one else has thought of national socialism
Speaker 1: in this period of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Alam bells
Speaker 1: and I'll be rung around the world. There's there's no
Speaker 1: evidence of like how this could go badly in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen thirties. So Gonzalez is becomes yeah, he's we've
Speaker 1: just been joking about this. Gonzalez does accurately identify one
Speaker 1: of the biggest problems with Paraguay, which was the kind
Speaker 1: of economic liberty, like the economic liberalism that has allowed
Speaker 1: a tiny number of elites to buy all of the
Speaker 1: land and natural resources in the country. Right, he recognizes
Speaker 1: this is a huge problem that is just a justification
Speaker 1: for the rich to take advantage of the poor. Now,
Speaker 1: the leader of Paraguay at this point in the early
Speaker 1: forties is a dictator named Maringo. In nineteen forty he
Speaker 1: had suspended the constitution and banned political parties like you do.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen forty six he legalized political activity again
Speaker 1: and formed a cabinet with the Colorado Party and a
Speaker 1: Democratic Socialist Party. Now Gonzalez is back in the country
Speaker 1: by this point, and he does not like the idea
Speaker 1: of the Colorado Party sharing power with a coalition government,
Speaker 1: so he starts to build a street fighting movement for
Speaker 1: the Colorados in order to like, you know, beat and
Speaker 1: murder their opponents in the streets. Kind of themed after
Speaker 1: the essay in Germany. Yeah, a little bit of good vibe,
Speaker 1: I'm picking up. Yeah. Now, things come to a head
Speaker 1: at the start of nineteen forty seven, which brings Paraguay
Speaker 1: a fun new civil war called the Barefoot Revolution. The
Speaker 1: side shook out roughly to every other political party and
Speaker 1: most of the officers on one side and just the
Speaker 1: Colorado Party, but a bunch of soldiers also on the
Speaker 1: other side. And it's it's ugly, it's very short, but
Speaker 1: extremely bloody. And one of the reasons why the Colorado
Speaker 1: Party wins the civil war is that Alfredo Stressner is
Speaker 1: a general by this point, and he is in command
Speaker 1: of the country's largest artillery division. And when you kind
Speaker 1: of just have one artillery division and the other side
Speaker 1: doesn't have an artillery division, you know what, it's very
Speaker 1: easy to do. Yeah, it's just kill everybody, that's yeah. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: So Stressner is a big part of why his side
Speaker 1: wins this civil war, and over the next two years
Speaker 1: things do not calm down though. There are in two
Speaker 1: years six coups and counter coups, and Stressner participates in four.
Speaker 1: So he is by like nineteen the early fifties, he
Speaker 1: is like one of the most experienced coopers on the planet. Like,
Speaker 1: this guy could give notes to the CIA. Oh, you
Speaker 1: guys are doing a coup. Now, I've been in a
Speaker 1: bunch of those. Let me tell you, let me walk
Speaker 1: you through the basics. Yeah. Now, it is a well
Speaker 1: known fact that carrying out coups are it's like eating
Speaker 1: potato chips. You never stop with one, right, And in
Speaker 1: Stressner's case, he he does like five and in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four he decides it is his turn to be
Speaker 1: the man doing the cooping. He had succeeded in gaining
Speaker 1: the support of the military by this point, and Gonzalez's
Speaker 1: wing of the Colorado Party. And now I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote from an article and Vanity Fair by Alex Schumatov.
Speaker 1: The coup took place while all of a Suncon society
Speaker 1: was at the Philharmonic. Legend has it that the shooting
Speaker 1: started just at the thunderous beginning of Beethoven's fifth Da
Speaker 1: Da Da Dam and everyone thought that it was part
Speaker 1: of the show until soldiers burst onto the stage and
Speaker 1: announced that a coup was under way. This is again
Speaker 1: the struth. It's like, this is like a this is
Speaker 1: not a thing that has not happened before either, like
Speaker 1: this this is a way to do coups. Oh yeah, Look,
Speaker 1: if you're not timing your coup with an orchestral presentation
Speaker 1: like at the Philharmonic, what are you even cooing? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: come on, it's a coup without culture, and it's that
Speaker 1: coup at all. Have a little bit of art, you know.
Speaker 1: That's That's all I'm saying about a good old fashioned coup.
Speaker 1: It's it's you know, you could do it in a
Speaker 1: in a Mala piece, because I don't know, have you
Speaker 1: seen Mala's Hammer, No, Okay, it's worth googling. It's a
Speaker 1: giant fucking hammer that, like I guess like every every
Speaker 1: orchestra has to have one because it's just one piece
Speaker 1: that he wrote that one of the instruments is just
Speaker 1: a dude hitting a wooden box with it, like a
Speaker 1: comedy sized hammer, And I feel like that would give
Speaker 1: you some more cover for coups in Beethoven. So they
Speaker 1: fucked up in that regard. Yeah, Yeah, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a John Waters quote where he's like talking about today's
Speaker 1: hackers and the thing that depresses him about the fact
Speaker 1: that they all just kind of like wear hoodies and shit,
Speaker 1: and he's like, look, I love what you're doing, but
Speaker 1: if you're going to like hack into the Defense Department's
Speaker 1: computers and like spread top secret information to try to
Speaker 1: bring them down, you should have an outfit for that, right,
Speaker 1: You've got to like a little pinash, you know. That's
Speaker 1: what you gotta respect about Stressner. He's got a little
Speaker 1: bit of pinash here. You know, this is this is
Speaker 1: a this is a coup that's got some art to it.
Speaker 1: Um gosh, darnett. So you know what else has art
Speaker 1: to it? Is it? Gold? Gold is the only real
Speaker 1: form of art, James, because gold never fades. It's eternal,
Speaker 1: just like this podcast, which will continue from now until
Speaker 1: the heat death of the universe and the end of
Speaker 1: all things. Ah, what a what a great time. We're
Speaker 1: all back. We're talking about the beginning of the Stressner era.
Speaker 1: So the period of time that he's in power, his
Speaker 1: regime is known as the Stronato, and it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where, like a lot of the this is
Speaker 1: sort of one of the there's this kind of concept
Speaker 1: in Paraguayan politics that's evolved over the last hundred years
Speaker 1: or so called I don't know how to pronounce this,
Speaker 1: but mba r ete, which is an indigenous Guarani word
Speaker 1: meaning like the law of the strongest right. This is
Speaker 1: a like a strongly believed this. This is just kind
Speaker 1: of like the I mean, we've gone through the history here, right,
Speaker 1: this is the of the time, right, it's been nothing
Speaker 1: but strong men dictators, And to be frank like you,
Speaker 1: if you're one of these people who's living through these
Speaker 1: periods where there's like seven coups in two years, you
Speaker 1: might just find yourself wanting someone strong enough to stop it, right,
Speaker 1: someone who could actually hold onto power so everyone can
Speaker 1: get their fucking breath like it he comes to like
Speaker 1: Stressner is it's not going to be easy for him
Speaker 1: to solidify power because Paraguay's famously unstable. But also he
Speaker 1: has this benefit that very few dictators get, where everything
Speaker 1: has been so bad for so long that people are
Speaker 1: willing to put up with a lot from a dictator
Speaker 1: if he can actually hold things together. And like we
Speaker 1: talk about how the instability of the Weimar years contributed
Speaker 1: to the rise of the Nazis, that's not a long
Speaker 1: period of time. This is like a hundred something years
Speaker 1: of constant chaos and bullshit. So given the fact that
Speaker 1: Paraguay goes through presidents like porn directors go through lube,
Speaker 1: the fact that Stressner managed just to make himself dictator
Speaker 1: is again not in and of itself impressive. Someone had
Speaker 1: managed to do that about every year since eighteen seventy.
Speaker 1: What's impressive is that he'd held onto that title. For
Speaker 1: he holds onto this title, he's in power for thirty
Speaker 1: five years. That is almost unprecedented in world history. Saddam
Speaker 1: rules Iraq less than thirty years. Stolenis in power for
Speaker 1: like twenty nine years. MAOIs in power for like twenty
Speaker 1: seven years. It is extremely uncommon for a dictator or
Speaker 1: a king at any point in history to reign for
Speaker 1: more than thirty years, very very rare. The fact that
Speaker 1: Stressner does this in a place as unstable as Paraguay
Speaker 1: means that he's doing something. He's doing something competent from
Speaker 1: like a consolidation of power standpoint, right, He's good at
Speaker 1: what he's doing, not not in a moral sense, but
Speaker 1: justin This is not an easy situation to handle, so obviously, Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the things that Stressner has to deal with
Speaker 1: as soon as he takes power is the fact that
Speaker 1: there's going to be a million other people who are
Speaker 1: already planning to coop him out of power and take
Speaker 1: power themselves. And I want to quote now from an
Speaker 1: article or from that book by Peter Lambert. At the
Speaker 1: time of the nineteen fifty four coup, the different factions
Speaker 1: within the Colorado Party supported Stressner in the belief that
Speaker 1: they would be able to use him for their own
Speaker 1: political inns in the event. However, before nineteen fifty six
Speaker 1: and nineteen sixty six, Stressner manipulated existing factional divisions to
Speaker 1: consolidate his own control over the Colorado Party. Through skillful
Speaker 1: political maneuvering, Stressner selectively purged real or perceived party opposition.
Speaker 1: Epifanio Mendez Flitez, the major political rifle to Stressner, was
Speaker 1: isolated and exiled in nineteen fifty six. In nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: Stressner responded to rebellion within the Colorado Party by dissolving Congress,
Speaker 1: sending troops onto the streets, and exiling four hundred members
Speaker 1: of the more reformist Colorado Activists. The expulsion of his
Speaker 1: powerful Minister of the Interior, Edgar L. Yesfnin in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, represented the final move in eliminating internal party
Speaker 1: opposition and in bringing the party firmly under his control.
Speaker 1: And that's like a kind of good high level overview
Speaker 1: of what Stressner does to consolidate power. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: provide a lot of texture. It's just sort of a
Speaker 1: list of people who get purged and kicked out. So
Speaker 1: I want to read another quote from that Vanity Fair article,
Speaker 1: which deals with the story of a single person Stressner
Speaker 1: had to suppress. Take, for instance, the case of Napoleon
Speaker 1: or Togoza, an attractive upperclass cavalry officer who ended up
Speaker 1: being the longest held political prisoner in Latin America. The
Speaker 1: theories about why he was arrested are many in baroque,
Speaker 1: but some of them involve a sinister plot to overthrow Stressner.
Speaker 1: When a young cadet, Alberto Benitez was killed, either by
Speaker 1: other officers to cover up a homosexual clique or because
Speaker 1: he was tortured by the police as encouragement to reveal
Speaker 1: details of a coup plot. The Minister of the Interior,
Speaker 1: Edgar Yussunfran or so. One theory goes hit upon the
Speaker 1: brilliant idea of pinning the murder on Ortogoza, who was
Speaker 1: not actually involved in any plot yet, but was just
Speaker 1: the sort you had to watch out for. Putting him
Speaker 1: away would be what is known as an acapette, a
Speaker 1: warning slap to anyone who got ideas about moving against
Speaker 1: the president. Where it goes A's insistence on his complete
Speaker 1: innocence fell on deaf ears. He was not allowed to
Speaker 1: be present at his trial, and one of his lawyers
Speaker 1: was arrested and beaten. He was condemned to death, although
Speaker 1: Stressner later commuted the sentence to life imprisonment after a
Speaker 1: priest threatened to break the seal of confession and tell
Speaker 1: who the real murderers were. Um, so yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: that's that's Stressner. That's how this guy wields and consolidates power.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a nice guy, Yeah, it's yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty normal thing to do. He is such a nice
Speaker 1: guy that he is given. We've gone through all of
Speaker 1: these other dictator nicknames, Stressner gets the best of them, um,
Speaker 1: because people just start calling him the tarrannosaur. What the
Speaker 1: fuck for? Look, ye sons, he sounds like reptile if
Speaker 1: honestly though, like, this guy's a piece of shit. But
Speaker 1: if that's the nickname that you get, it's hard. That's
Speaker 1: hard to beat. That's about as hard a nickname as
Speaker 1: anyone's ever gotten. That bold and they give him that
Speaker 1: in part because he becomes he's there. He's in power
Speaker 1: for so long, right, he's like this ancient, implacable, malevolent force. Now, legally,
Speaker 1: Paraguay continues to maintain the trappings of a democracy, including
Speaker 1: a Congress that occasionally gets to vote on stuff that
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. For example, since nineteen twenty nine, the country
Speaker 1: had been in a legal state of siege, which suspended
Speaker 1: civil liberties, including habeas corpus. Stressner continued this, and Congress
Speaker 1: renewed the state of siege every ninety days. His justification
Speaker 1: was the threat of communism, which pleased the Americans. Many
Speaker 1: of the changes Stressner brought were initially positive. The biggest
Speaker 1: achievement of his reign was simply staying in power, which
Speaker 1: put an end to the ceaseless stream of coups and
Speaker 1: civil conflicts that had racked Paraguay for generations. This allowed
Speaker 1: the state to actually focus on delivering services to regular people.
Speaker 1: One example of this would be Stressner's stabilization of the guarani,
Speaker 1: Paraguay's currency, which had been essentially worthless for decades. He
Speaker 1: set a peg for the currency's value at one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five guarrani to one US dollar, and while
Speaker 1: every other currency inflated rapidly in South America during this
Speaker 1: period of time, he was able to use the hammer
Speaker 1: of state power to keep the guarani locked into place. However,
Speaker 1: as Alex Shomatov notes, there was a price for all this.
Speaker 1: When student and labor groups demonstrated in the Recession of
Speaker 1: fifty nine, he crushed them. When the Congress objected, the
Speaker 1: police brutality against students protesting a bus fare increase, he
Speaker 1: dissolved it. The downside to order and progress. With Stressner
Speaker 1: was one of the largest military and police to general
Speaker 1: population ratios in the world and the highest proportion of
Speaker 1: unsentenced prisoners in the Western hemisphere. He purged the old
Speaker 1: generals and four hundred of the old democraticos and replaced
Speaker 1: them with loyal members of the Bandwagon. Membership in the
Speaker 1: party became compulsory for military officers and civil sergeants and
Speaker 1: strongly advised for anyone else who wanted to get anywhere.
Speaker 1: In the various sham elections, he received more votes in
Speaker 1: some rural areas than there were registered voters. His heavy
Speaker 1: leonine face was posted everywhere, and radio stations began the
Speaker 1: day with the don Alfredo Polka polka, followed by the
Speaker 1: message the Constitutional President of the Republic, General Alfredo Stressner,
Speaker 1: salutes the Paraguayan people and wishes them a prosperous day.
Speaker 1: So this is like one of the more effective police
Speaker 1: states I've ever seen anyone institute. And he does it
Speaker 1: in a He comes to power in a state where
Speaker 1: like holding on for more than two years is almost
Speaker 1: unheard of, and in a couple of years, he has
Speaker 1: created like the most policed country in the Americas, which
Speaker 1: is interesting to me. He's very he's a very fast
Speaker 1: and efficient worker. Yeah that he's like he like builds
Speaker 1: a state around himself, Yes, yeah, around himself and his
Speaker 1: maintenance of power. But he also gives people a reason
Speaker 1: for wanting him to stay in power, which is that,
Speaker 1: for one thing, we're not dealing with these constant overthrows
Speaker 1: of the government anymore. And as a result, while there's
Speaker 1: all this chaos in a lot of other parts of
Speaker 1: Latin America, that's not happening here, and our currency is
Speaker 1: maintaining its value. It's kind of worth noting we're about
Speaker 1: to talk about the US is very involved in Stressner's regime,
Speaker 1: but this is the only country this is and they're
Speaker 1: part of Operation Condor, right, um. But Paraguay is the
Speaker 1: only country that's involved in Condor that the CIA doesn't
Speaker 1: do any domestic like they don't have to fund any
Speaker 1: right wing rebel groups. They don't need to. He has
Speaker 1: such a hold on power, um. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: other things that he does during the early period of
Speaker 1: his reign, development projects that provide a lot of jobs
Speaker 1: for Paraguayans. He builds a road to Brazil that brings
Speaker 1: new options for trade while he has people build that road. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he like when he comes to power, there's no
Speaker 1: storm drains in the capital, there's no running water, really,
Speaker 1: there's not regular electricity. All of those things come to
Speaker 1: the capitol like once Stressner is in power. And a
Speaker 1: part of that's just because like, well, we're not fighting
Speaker 1: this endless series of coups anymore, so we can spend
Speaker 1: some of our resources on making this place livable. A
Speaker 1: lot of why he has the money to do this
Speaker 1: is because he decides to bill himself as an anti communist. Now,
Speaker 1: there's people who will argue that he was not really ideologically,
Speaker 1: he didn't really care one way or the other. He
Speaker 1: would have been a socialist if that had been the
Speaker 1: way for Stressner to be in power. Right, that's a
Speaker 1: thing that some people will argue. But he's he's wise
Speaker 1: enough to see that, like, well, it's the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties. If I bill myself as an anti communist,
Speaker 1: I can get a lot of that sweet ass America money.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's that's kind of the best way
Speaker 1: to improve your material base in Latin America at this
Speaker 1: period of time is have like the CIA black budget,
Speaker 1: shotgun money your way. So the month after he takes
Speaker 1: power in fifty four, US development aid to Paraguay increases
Speaker 1: by fifty percent. Between nineteen fifty four and nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: the country gets twenty four million dollars from US, and
Speaker 1: we send advisors and CIA agents into Paraguay to train
Speaker 1: the police in advanced torture techniques because he's like, we're
Speaker 1: not good enough at torturing, and America is like, oh no,
Speaker 1: we got guys who know to do that. We'll get
Speaker 1: him right in there. And the reward for the US
Speaker 1: here is eighteen In nineteen fifty eight, Nixon tries to
Speaker 1: go to Venezuela. He goes to Venezuela and he gets
Speaker 1: like pelted with rocks. But then he heads to Paraguay
Speaker 1: afterwards and he's like met in the street with adoring crowd.
Speaker 1: Stressner stage manages it. Nixon gets a great photo op
Speaker 1: out of the situation, so you know, it's all worthwhile
Speaker 1: for the US. We got Nixon got a nice photo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whether yeah that makes her styles today. Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: the photo of Dixon getting pelted with rocks and I
Speaker 1: used to live in Venezuela, and yeah, that's a proud moment.
Speaker 1: Proud moment. Yeah, like I've been shamed of course, Like
Speaker 1: that is what what what could be prouder than throwing
Speaker 1: a rock at Richard Nixon? Not enough people in this
Speaker 1: country through fucking rocks Richard Nixon. If we're being on it,
Speaker 1: we should all have been throwing rocks at Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: That is beyond debate. That's really a bipartisan consensus on that.
Speaker 1: I feel like we could end at the Cold War. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but enough people throwing enough rocks at him. The old
Speaker 1: people of Venezuela picked up where we left off. Yeah, tragically.
Speaker 1: In Paraguay, stress is able to stop any rock throwing.
Speaker 1: Now that same year, the same year Nixon visits, fifty eight,
Speaker 1: a left wing guerrilla leader attempts to invade Paraguay. He
Speaker 1: brings with him four hundred and fifty eight soldiers trained
Speaker 1: in Argentina who attempted to infiltrate the country and start
Speaker 1: recruiting for an insurgent war. Stressner's CIA backed security. Basically,
Speaker 1: the CIA learns this is happening, and they warned Stressner,
Speaker 1: and he sends six thousand soldiers to crack down. Most
Speaker 1: of these guys are gunned down, but the survivors are
Speaker 1: taken and put in to like helicopters and dropped into
Speaker 1: Piranha filled waters. Yeah, it seemed to become Pitia ship
Speaker 1: for proud boys. Yeah. That said, if you are the
Speaker 1: kind of person who's willing to play ball with a
Speaker 1: vicious authoritarian, Stressner's regime is not the worst time that
Speaker 1: you will have had in your lifetime in Paraguay, right,
Speaker 1: at least not in the early period of time. However,
Speaker 1: the fact that he has made his country a stable
Speaker 1: place that is very friendly for right wing authoritarians makes
Speaker 1: it an enticing getaway for a very specific group of
Speaker 1: people escaped Nazi war criminals. So this is good. We're
Speaker 1: getting to a real fun part of the story here.
Speaker 1: Paraguay's got this fascinating history with Germany. We've kind of
Speaker 1: talked about some bits of it, right, and this is
Speaker 1: the whole region. Right, You've got like you've got guys
Speaker 1: like von Kunt going over to Bolivia, Paraguay gets its
Speaker 1: own Germans like as we you know, as I noted,
Speaker 1: Stressner's dad is a Bavarian. In eighteen eighty six, Bernard Foster,
Speaker 1: who is the brother in law of Friedrich Nietzsche, had
Speaker 1: moved to Paraguay. He moves there because he's like number one.
Speaker 1: Eighteen eighty six when Forster moves to Paraguay is like
Speaker 1: the immediate wake of that horrible, devastating war. And so
Speaker 1: Paraguay is like, we will give Europeans money if they
Speaker 1: will immigrate here and help us have like make enough people,
Speaker 1: like we need your come right, we need we need
Speaker 1: a lot of We need all the seamen we can
Speaker 1: get right now, there are not many of us left. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's when Forster comes over. And Forster also has
Speaker 1: come related plans, but much more racist ones than the
Speaker 1: Paraguayan government, because he is a philosopher of anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: And to Forster, the primary appeal of Paraguay is that
Speaker 1: it doesn't have any Jewish people, right, it does, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a lot of them. Um. And he's like, well,
Speaker 1: since this country is basically free of Jewish influence, and
Speaker 1: use this country's policy to move a bunch of Arians
Speaker 1: in and create weather Germania. You know this, uh, this
Speaker 1: this German paradise in Paraguay. Um, Now this is obviously
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work for shit, Yeah, it is. It
Speaker 1: is not going to succeed. And I'm going to read
Speaker 1: quote from an article by Nick Farizos. Here. Forster, his
Speaker 1: wife Elizabeth, and fourteen families from Saxon, he crossed the
Speaker 1: Atlantic and the dead of winter and reached Paraguay in
Speaker 1: the swelter of summer. They carved a settlement out of
Speaker 1: the rainforest northeast of the capital of Suncion, but the
Speaker 1: isolated community was soon infested with bugs, burrowing into fingernails
Speaker 1: and toenails and laying eggs beneath the skin. Yes, fucking
Speaker 1: hates an anti semitis this next part, James, You're going
Speaker 1: to really like. Their indigenous neighbors knew the cure, but colonists.
Speaker 1: The colonists refused to consult an inferior race, sitting there like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: we got like a plant. We just rub on us
Speaker 1: to deal with that. Oh you're dying. That's cool. Foisted
Speaker 1: on his own patime. He'd love to see it. The
Speaker 1: strict colonies. Young bucks pounded nails into the coffin of
Speaker 1: an unsullied aryan New Germany when they began betting and
Speaker 1: wedding local women. Plagued by sickness and unpaid bank loans,
Speaker 1: Forster retreated to the Hotel de Lago in the town
Speaker 1: of San Bernardino in eighteen ninety nine and committed suicide
Speaker 1: by shooting up with morphine and strychnine nine in room nineteen.
Speaker 1: So hey, good to this episode. Frederick Nazer's shitty ass
Speaker 1: brother in law kills himself. That's nights. Nietzsche really inspired
Speaker 1: some great suicide. Boy. We're going to talk more about
Speaker 1: Bernard Forrester next episode, and a lot more about the Nazis. James,
Speaker 1: We're not nearly done with the Nazi portion of this episode. O. Good, great, good.
Speaker 1: But speaking of Nazis, I know that's not a good
Speaker 1: way to lead into plugs. Not speaking of Natz Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: how how where do you get to plug? James? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely not any Naties. Actually, I've returned to Twitter after
Speaker 1: my band so people for now now, yeah, until until
Speaker 1: I post another picture of Mussolini hanging out with his friends,
Speaker 1: and then I'll be that that is that is James
Speaker 1: stout Um. And yeah, I also do a podcast with
Speaker 1: you and Sophie and several of our other friends and colleagues.
Speaker 1: It's called It Could Happen here. People should listen to it.
Speaker 1: It's got some banging episodes. Yeah, all right, enough legendary,
Speaker 1: All right, all right, legendary. Okay, everybody, that's the end
Speaker 1: of the episode. Go. You know. Yeah, bugs anti Semites
Speaker 1: wants to eat. Yeah yeah. My advice would be, if
Speaker 1: you're too racist to stop the bugs from eating your fingers,
Speaker 1: maybe you rethink your politics. Or take a ship ton
Speaker 1: of morphine. I don't care. Yeah, yeah, honestly, the morphine
Speaker 1: in stryct nine works fine too. If you're a Nazi,
Speaker 1: I'm fine either way. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you won't
Speaker 1: find me crying Behind the Bastards is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit
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